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Information processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatusRelated Patent Categories: Television Signal Processing For Dynamic Recording Or Reproducing, Processing Of Television Signal For Dynamic Recording Or Reproducing, Using DiscInformation processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatus description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20070041718, Information processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatus. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
[0001] The invention relates to an information processing apparatus with a disc drive and in particular to power saving during operation of disc drives, in particular optical disc drives, when accessing information items stored on a disc. The invention also relates to a method of manufacturing such a disc in a way that power consumption by the disc drive is minimized when the information items are accessed. [0002] Discs conventionally serve to distribute database information to users. The users are provided with an information processing apparatus with which the disc can be read, using a user interface that provides structured access to information stored on the disc. When the disc contains tourist information, for example, the apparatus may serve as an electronic tourist guide permitting a user to retrieve information about such things as museums, monuments, street maps, restaurants, hotels, railway stations or bus stops, phrases to use in various contexts etc. [0003] In order to facilitate access to the information on the disc, a disc specific user interface is provided. The user interface enables non-expert users such as tourists to make use of stored information from such a database. For this purpose the apparatus is typically provided with an electronic display screen and an input device. The user interface instructions generally cause the display screen to display pages, with a programmed layout which show retrieved information and/or offer possibilities to enter user commands. The user interface instructions accept user input data from the input device and use this input to select information items. The user interface instructions retrieve the selected information items and display image information derived from the information items on the display screen. [0004] In the example of the tourist guide, for example, a first page may be provided to enter a location about which the user wants more information. From this first page the user might select to switch to a second page for selecting from nearby hotels or from nearby restaurants, railway stations or bus stops. From the second page, in turn, the user might call a third page to view phrases that are useful for a particular type of environment. [0005] The underlying data structure on the disc that enables this type of use forms a database. A database as used herein contains at least one set of records that each have predetermined fields that the user interface can use to select records and to extract information for display in a standard way. A set of records with restaurant data may be provided for example. The records in a set are of identical type, each with a predetermined set of fields, whose content may vary from record to record. A respective record may be provided for example for each restaurant, with attributes such as "city", "street", "kitchen type" (French, Cantonese etc.), "photograph of interior" etc. The user interface specifies which sets of records of the database and which fields in each set should be accessed. [0006] Such a database can have considerable size. Not only can there be a considerable number of records, but individual records may be large, for example if they contain image data for displaying photographs on the display screen. The database can be a database in a strict sense, comprising standardized table data structures for different sets, but the word "database", as used herein, is not limited to this strict sense. [0007] For tourist applications, for example, it is desirable that this type of information processing device is portable and that the database and the user interfaces can be supplied on exchangeable optical discs. Portable equipment has to be powered from a battery. Therefore reduction of power consumption is an important design consideration for this type of equipment. In the case of equipment with a disc drive power consumption can be reduced by switching to a power saving mode in which components like the motor, the laser and the head actuators draw no current. During read operations the disc drive is switched to a read mode, in which these components receive power supply current, but between read operations the disc drive switches to the power saving mode. The shorter the time the disc drive operates in the read mode, the less energy it consumes from the battery. [0008] The percentage of time that the disc drive has to operate in the read mode depends on the task that has to be performed, on the architecture of the equipment that accesses the disc drive to perform that task and on the arrangement of data on the disc. Answering queries over a database that is stored on the disc typically requires keeping the disc drive out of the power saving mode for a relatively high percentage of time. Especially compared with streaming applications (e.g. playing a video or audio stream) the percentage of time that the disc drive is out of the power saving mode for retrieving the same amount of data is very high for answering queries. [0009] For data stream access, measures are known that minimize the disc seek time to load the datastream. The entire data stream is stored contiguously on disc as much as possible, in the order that the data will be used, so that a minimum of head movements is needed to read the data. Although aimed at optimising the use of the disc bandwidth, this also reduces power consumption, since it reduces the time that the disc needs to be powered is minimized inherently. [0010] Similarly, storing the records of a database contiguously could be used to minimize the time needed for loading data during database access. However, in practice this does not reduce power consumption in the case of a database application. In the case of a individual database accesses the complex, non-linear access pattern increases the time that the disc-drive needs to be fully powered. In this way information processing devices that use database-like information stored on a disc present an energy consumption problem. [0011] Among others, it is an object of the invention to provide for lower power consumption in equipment with a disc drive, when having database-like access to information. [0012] The invention provides for a method according to claim 1. According to the invention, the records of the database or even parts of the records are stored distributed over different locations on the disc rather than arranged contiguously. Records and/or part of the attributes are grouped adaptive to a combination of the architecture of the disc drive and the queries that are defined by the user interface instructions. [0013] The architecture of the disc drive defines the amount of data that can be read at a time, for example due to the length of a buffer memory that is used to receive data read from disc during a read operation. Often fragments are defined for a disc, which defines the basic unit of fetching. In this case the buffer size is preferably an integer multiple (1.times., 2.times. etc) of the fragment size. Especially in the case of optical disc drives the fragment is usually relatively large, e.g. 2 Mbyte. [0014] To minimize power consumption the user interface structure is analyzed to identify how the database on the disc will be accessed most frequently. Subsets of records that the user interface is expected to load together most frequently are grouped and stored in one or more contiguous fragments so that the records of each subset are contained in a minimum number of contiguous fragments, preferably in a single fragment. For example, records from each subset may be stored starting from the start of a respective fragment, leaving a gap on the disc (which may be used for storing other data) before the start of another fragment, in which records from another subset are stored. In this way the subset crosses a minimum number of fragment boundaries, whereby the number of fragments used for storing the subset is minimized. Of course, without deviating from the invention, instead a gap of the same size of the gap at the end, or a plurality of gaps with the same aggregate size, may be located anywhere among the records of a subset, not just at the end of the subset. Also fragments that store different subsets need not be stored contiguously. On the other hand more than one subset may be stored in one fragment if there is room. [0015] In spite of the distributed storage the records from different subsets in combination functionally preferably still form an entire database that can be searched and retrieved with less frequently used queries from the user interface, or from other user interfaces. Preferably, the records themselves may even be stored distributed, so that only the fields needed by the user interface are stored in the minimum fragments, other fields being stored in other fragments, so as to minimize the number of fragments that needs to be loaded by the user interface. [0016] The subsets, which are thus used for structuring storage of records, may be determined in various ways. For example, in one embodiment the user interface uses database queries with joined tables in which fields from different tables (sets of records) are combined if they have matching fields and satisfy some user selectable criterion. In this case, the subsets of the records that are each stored in a minimum number of fragments may be selected on the basis of field contents that occur in a further set of records that the user interface joins with the records to select the subset. Storing the possible subsets on disc in anticipation of these queries minimizes the power consumed during reading. Preferably, the further records from the further table that are required for the query are stored in the same fragment or fragments as the records from the subset, in the gap or gaps mentioned before. This also minimizes power consumption. [0017] In another embodiment the user interface enables the user to select subsets for retrieval. In this embodiment the subset that the user interface allows to be selected by the user are used to structure storage on disc, so as to minimize the number of fragments that has to be loaded for each individual selection. [0018] In another embodiment records that the user interface is expected to need in response to different user selections (i.e. that belong to multiple subsets) are copied to multiple fragments so that no additional fragments need to be loaded when a subset of records is loaded and a record belongs to another subset as well. [0019] Preferably the records are stored as a file in a file structure. In this case the file is stored distributed over the fragments so that the subsets of records from the file are each stored in a respective fragment. [0020] As has been mentioned the invention is especially advantageous for battery powered apparatuses, because it reduces power consumption from batteries. Also the invention is especially advantageous for optical discs, because optical disc drives are power efficient for a large fragment size. These and other objects and advantages of the invention will be described in more detail using the following figures [0021] FIG. 1 shows an information processing apparatus [0022] FIG. 2 shows an access architecture [0023] FIG. 3 shows a disc layout Continue reading about Information processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatus... Full patent description for Information processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatus Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Information processing apparatus with a disc drive and a disc for such an apparatus patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. 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